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After the movie, I went to IMDB to do a little research on the film and ran across an interesting note in the "Trivia" section. You can check it out by clicking this link or just read it here. It's pretty short.
Gillian's cat is named Pyewacket. This name has become a popular one for cats because of this movie, but few know its origin: Pyewacket was one of the familiar spirits of a witch detected by the "witchfinder general" Matthew Hopkins in March 1644 in the town of Maningtree, Essex, UK. He claimed he spied on the witches as they held their meeting close by his house, and heard them mention the name of a local woman. She was arrested and deprived of sleep for four nights, at the end of which she confessed and named her familiars, describing their forms. They were:
* Holt
* Jarmara
* Vinegar Tom
* Sacke and Sugar
* Newes
* Ilemauzer
* Pyewacket
* Pecke in the Crowne
* Griezzel Greedigutt
Hopkins says he and nine other witnesses saw the first five of these, which appeared in the forms described by the witch. Only the first of these was a cat; the next two were dogs, and the others were a black rabbit and a polecat. So it's not clear whether Pyewacket was a cat's name or not. As for the meanings, Hopkins says only that they were such that "no mortall could invent." The incident is described in Hopkins's pamphlet "The Discovery of Witches" (1647).
Pretty interesting, no?
Before you read this, you didn't know the names of the familiars of English witches, did you?
Well, I didn't.
I love having access to those names. I've no idea where I can use them, but I like having them in my back pocket for later reference.
For more on Hopkins, you can check out his wikipedia page, here.
Historically Yours,
Mr.B
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